quartered for making that racket.
The half-fiend groaned, grimaced, then tried to sit up. The pounding in his head made him dizzy, and he feared he would be ill.
What's the matter with me? he wondered. Am I injured?
Kaanyr couldn't remember what happened. He took a couple of deep breaths and tried to clear his head. He kept his face on the cool stones beneath him and waited until his equilibrium stopped spinning.
Stones, he thought. Did I fall?
He reached out with one hand and began to feel his own body, testing for broken bones. Everything was intact.
A familiar feminine voice cut through the fog of his wooziness. 'Micus, wait!'
Aliisza.
'Stop this. Let me find a way to help you,' the alu said. Her voice sounded desperate, frantic. It filled him with worry.
Micus! He knew that name!
Memories tumbled back into Vhok-
The rotunda…
A battle with Myshik…
The thrice-damned hobgoblin nearly cleaved me in twain, Kaanyr remembered. I should be dead. The cambion reached behind, feeling the place along his back where the half-dragon had struck.
He found no sign of any wound.
Fearful that he would suffer another attack from the cunning Myshik, Kaanyr forced himself to open his eyes and sit up.
He rested near the very periphery of the rotunda, deep in shadow. A single glow of light, oddly dim and unsteady, flickered from near the center of the chamber. He spotted no sign of the draconic hobgoblin, but there was movement to his left, among the columns holding the dome aloft, where Aliisza's voice had emanated.
As Kaanyr rose unsteadily onto one knee, he spied his blade, crackling with purplish black energy, near his foot. He reached down and took hold of the weapon, then heard the sound of flesh striking flesh, followed by a soft groan.
Aliisza!
Kaanyr forced himself to his feet and staggered toward the sound.
The cambion had to follow the curve of the columns to reach the source, and when he stepped into view, he nearly stumbled to the floor in shock.
A dreadful creature nearly filled the space between the curved wall and the columns, a beast made by foul magic. Half man and half something else, it raised a massive axe high and reared like a horse on back legs. Aliisza slumped before it in a daze, unwilling or unable to retreat from the impending strike.
Kaanyr flipped his sword around, snatching the blade end out of the air. In the same smooth motion, he yanked his arm back and then snapped it forward, flinging the weapon at the abomination before him. The sword spun across the distance between Kaanyr and the monstrosity.
In his haste, Kaanyr had not been careful with his aim, but he did not care. The sword tumbled past the flank of the creature's human torso, grazing one of its four arms and raking a gash along it. Purplish energy crackled outward in a spiderweb mosaic, radiating from the wound.
The beast screamed and flailed, its deadly strike against Aliisza disrupted. The axe slipped from its grasp as the abomination staggered to one side.
Kaanyr did not wait to see the effects of his attack. Reaching inside his tunic, he stumbled toward the thing. He pulled a wand free and prepared to utter the powerful arcane phrase that would trigger its magic.
The beast turned toward him, and Kaanyr's words died on his lips.
Micus's fevered eyes bore into the cambion.
'You!' Micus screamed, spinning to fully confront Vhok. 'Damn you back to the Hells from whence you came!' He lurched toward the half-fiend, and Kaanyr spied Myshik's face jutting from Micus's gut. The half-hobgoblin's mouth slavered as it stared gleefully at him.
Kaanyr recovered his wits and leveled the wand at the onrushing abomination. He activated the magic imbued in the device and flinched as blinding lightning burst from its tip. The charge arced across the distance and engulfed Micus and Myshik in a shower of crackling energy and sparks. To the cambion, the discharge of magic felt… off.
The flash left afterimages in Kaanyr's vision, but he could make out enough to watch the monstrosity stagger to one side and go down.
Vhok held the wand steady for a moment, watching to see if the fused creatures remained a threat.
Micus's eyes stayed closed, but he still breathed. Likewise, Myshik's head appeared unconscious. Once or twice, the wings upon the flank of the odd, centaur-shaped abomination twitched, but that was all.
Kaanyr approached the immobile form of the thing and nudged it with the toe of his boot. When it still did not move, he let out a sigh of relief and pocketed the wand. He turned toward Aliisza.
The alu still crouched near the column, her long, dark ringlets plastered to her pale, narrow face. She stared up at Kaanyr. Her eyes, so often smoldering in sultry delight, were instead wide and fearful. Her mouth, usually formed into a cunning smile or petulant frown, trembled. She kept her graceful, batlike wings folded snugly against her body. They matched the shiny black luster of her tight leather armor. Even in that moment of chaos and crisis, Kaanyr admired the form-fitting garment and how it accentuated the alu's shape.
'Kaanyr,' Aliisza said, her voice quavering. 'You're alive. I thought-'
'Don't ask me how,' Kaanyr replied, moving to the alu and kneeling down. He took her face in his hands, drew her close, and kissed her. He could feel her still trembling, and she resisted at first, rigid, as though afraid. Then she melted into him.
'I tried to stop you,' Aliisza said into his shoulder, her voice faint, desperate. 'I tried to stop you all.'
At her words, Kaanyr remembered how she had brought Micus to the rotunda. The cambion's joy at having the half-fiend safely back with him vanished, driven from him like a punch to the gut, as he recalled her betrayal.
'We were on the verge,' Kaanyr said as he stiffly untangled himself from her embrace. 'I was this close'-as he stood up, the cambion held his thumb and forefinger, almost touching, in front of her face-'to winning my freedom from Tauran's control. And then you went and sabotaged everything.' And to think how I grieved, believing I'd lost you within the Eye of Savras's vast caverns of knowledge. Weak, he thought. He wasn't sure if he meant it for Aliisza or himself.
The alu struggled to her knees. She looked like a street waif begging for coin. 'I wasn't the one,' she pleaded. 'It was Zasian. Please understand. I was trying to stop him!'
Zasian!
Kaanyr's memory flooded with thoughts of the hated priest and his treachery. New anger coursed through him, an unrelenting desire to rend the man.
With a snarl, Vhok turned from the alu and stalked toward his sword. It lay in the shadows, crackling with its malevolent energy.
'I don't understand a thing that's happened since you returned from the caverns,' he said, 'but I will free myself of Tauran's control. I will slay that damnable priest!' He jerked the sword off the ground and turned back toward the center of the rotunda. 'And I will not be stopped this time!'
'Wait!' Aliisza cried, trying to rise to her feet. She had to brace herself against the column to keep herself upright. 'Something's happened.' She reached toward him. 'To all of us. Can't you feel it?'
Vhok ignored the alu and stepped between the columns, into the light. He drew up short when he spied Zasian Menz across from him, standing with his arms folded protectively.
A glow emanated from the priest.
Zasian spotted Vhok and smiled, but it was not the treacherous grin the cambion remembered from before. The expression on the priest's face showed a mixture of confusion and hope. It came across as pure and warm, like the uncertainty of a child who has just been praised by his father after doing something for which he expected to be punished.
'Well met,' Zasian said. He looked around for a brief moment, frowning, then he gestured. 'What is this place?
